Flying

Cessna was late to the very light jet party. When the company first announced the Citation Mustang, in 2002, it refused to call it a light jet. Cessna CEO Jack Pelton to this day refuses to label the airplane a VLJ and instead describes it as a "downward defense of the product line."

In an ideal world, you'd have it all-a Wi-Fi Internet connection, e-mail access on your BlackBerry, four bars of signal strength on your cellphone and 200 channels of satellite television on a big, flat high-definition screen, all from the comfort of your seat in the cabin. In short, you'd have technologies that would make your time in the air more like your time on the ground.

While the average car winds up on the junk heap after about 13 years, the typical business jet has a much longer lifespan. In fact, at least a few are still flying after more than 40 years (see box below). One vintage jet we found is owned by Rick Edwards and Louis May of Little Rock, Ark., who are business partners and have been friends since childhood.

Airbus followed Boeing into the prepackaged "bizliner" market in 1997. That's when it announced the Airbus Corporate Jet (ACJ), a then $35 million executive version of its A319 airliner. At first, ACJ sales were sluggish, while Boeing initially did well with its 737 airliner variant. Today, Boeing has sold more than 100 of its Boeing Business Jets (BBJs).

Is it safe to use cellphones and other personal electronics on airplanes?
It depends on whom you ask, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University say that the cacophony of electronic "noise" emitted by portable devices brought onboard by passengers indeed can cause dangerous interference with navigation sensors in the cockpit.

Timmy (not his real name) is a four-year-old cancer patient. He cannot fly commercially due to his condition. But he must travel several times a year for treatment between his California home and Duke University Hospital in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

The early days were a little less than noble for Wyvern, the Palmyra, N.J.-based charter auditing firm. The company took its name from a mythical, winged dragon that was said to be so large it preyed upon elephants.

Quote/Unquote

“"How many leaders actively seek out and encourage views alien and at odds with their own? All too few...Who in your organization serves as your Challenger In Chief? Interrogating the choices you are considering making? Making you consider the uncontemplated, the unimaginable and that which contradicts or refutes your position? And also challenging you?"”

-Noreena Hertz, author of Eyes Wide Open: How To Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World